R - ggplot geom_bar - Formatting y axis from scientific to comma, breaks issue - x axis categorical, y axis continuous

Question

I am trying to create a simple bar chart in ggplot2 with a categorical X (states) and continuous Y (dollars spent) but the Y axis is displayed in scientific notation.

I'm not understanding why scale_y_continuous(labels="comma") is not working to do this.

An example of the data and error message are displayed below.

SS <- ggplot(statesummary,aes(factor(STATE),SPEND))+
        geom_bar(stat="identity",col="red",fill="white")+
        scale_y_continuous(labels="comma")

  "Error in scale_labels.continuous(scale, major) : 
   Breaks and labels are different lengths"  

  STATE     SPEND 
  NH        14,768,408 
  ME        882,312,066 
  RI        316,476,695 
  MA        2,939,600,063 
  CT        8,627,669,723 
  VT        968,411,831

Can someone please help me understand why this is and also what I should be doing? It seems like it should be a very easy conversion that would not require breaks.

Answer 1

There might be other issues, but the immediate one is that you need to remove the quotes around 'comma'. Additionally make sure you have the scales package.